Tibet, China, and America: Towards The Light?

ECONOMIST- On the topic of Tibet, Xi Jinping, the man widely expected to be the
next leader of the Chinese Communist Party, sounds much like his
predecessors. Speaking on July 19th in the capital, Lhasa, in front of
the Potala Palace, former residence of the Dalai Lamas, Tibet’s
spiritual leaders, he celebrated the way Chinese rule had led Tibet “from the dark toward the light”.

In material
terms, he has an obvious point. Tibet is far better-off than in 1951,
when a young Dalai Lama reached a “17-point agreement” ceding Chinese
sovereignty over the territory. He also has a point that, before 1951,
Tibet was not some idyllic Shangri-La of tinkling temple bells, lowing
conch shells and smiling people, but a highly stratified society relying
on mass monasticism and serfdom.

The difficulty Mr Xi and his
predecessors face, however, is that large numbers of Tibetans resent
Chinese rule. Many are still loyal to the Dalai Lama, who fled into
exile with some 80,000 of his followers after the crushing of an
anti-Chinese uprising in 1959. Since then the region has been scarred by
periodic riots, including a bloody outburst of anti-Chinese violence in Lhasa
in 2008.

This year has seen a confrontation at the Kirti monastery
in a part of historic Tibet now incorporated in the Chinese province of
Sichuan, after a young monk burnt himself to death in March. Hundreds
of monks have been taken off for “patriotic education”. This year has
also seen a heavy security crackdown to prevent any unrest to mark the
60th anniversary of the 17-point agreement, or the Party’s 90th birthday
on July 1st.

China,
in public at least, blames the Dalai Lama for the continued Tibetan
disaffection. So its spokesmen fume when he is received by foreign
leaders, especially America’s. On July 16th Barack Obama met the Dalai
Lama in the White House. After the meeting, the White House emphasised
that, besides underlining America’s support for Tibetans’ cultural
identity and human rights, Mr Obama also repeated America’s acceptance of Chinese sovereignty over
Tibet.

Nevertheless, the People’s Daily called the
meeting “an unscrupulous trick of pragmatism” that
undermined the United States’ position as a great world power. Mr Obama
has partly himself to blame for the accusation of pragmatism. In 2009 he
postponed a meeting with the Dalai Lama in order not to sour the
atmosphere for his trip to China a few months later—in effect conceding
that such meetings are not matters of pure principle.